Kurt_Woloch

OK, here's my best so far... 38870.

OK, here's my best so far... 1844.

Sorry, I'm late again... but I haven't played any classic games last week anyway. So here are my times for last week (July 13th through 19th) - none of them are relevant for the Top 10, however: Restaurant City (Facebook app): 254 minutes in several sessions Netrek: 144 minutes Illegal parking (Facebook app): 87 minutes in several sessions

Nop. It requires the OM. However I believe BlueMSX is already emulating it. OK... I think the game looks pretty good so far. But I wonder what it needs the OM for... the gameplay doesn't seem to have so many variables that 1k RAM wouldn't be enough. Or does it store something else that needs more RAM... tables, maybe?

Well, slightly out of topic, here's how I sort-of "hacked" a close relative to Thomas the Tank Engine...

I think the only chance to make it farther into the game is to make sort of a map containing all the locations of the fuel cans. Then when playing, look at the map so that you can anticipate the next can or cans coming up, knowing where they are so that you won't miss them by passing them by. This should give you enough fuel to get through the rounds. At least that's what I did with the arcade version.

OK... here are my times for the past week. The classic games: Looping (Colecovision): 47 minutes (HSC game) Montezuma's Revenge (2600): 10 minutes (HSC game) Crazy Chicky (Creativision): 7 minutes Mega Man Demo (2600): 3 minutes Charge! (2600): 1 minute The non-classic games (out of scope for the Top 10): Puzz Loop (arcade): 34 minutes (actually, this is an old game, but not that old... it's from 1998, so still outside of the scope of the Top 10) Zuma (Online game): 212 minutes in 3 sessions Restaurant City (Facebook app): 211 minutes in several sessions Illegal parking (Facebook app): 88 minutes in several sessions Kapiland (Browser game): 5 minutes in 2 sessions A note to "Zuma" and "Puzz Loop": Zuma first appeared as a Facebook app, but after the 2nd session, it suddenly disappeared. At that point I decided to play the "original" version, Puzz Loop, instead. After that, Zuma reappeared, but now it's not a Facebook app anymore, rather you get directed to PopCap's homepage (PopCap being the creator of Zuma) where there are more screens nagging you to buy the full version. But it's still tied in with Facebook as your high scores still get posted on your Facebook profile, although it's not a Facebook app per se anymore.

OK, here's my best so far... 2500.

OK, this is my best so far... 78790.

OK, here are my times for this week... since you said you are interested in everything I'm playing, I'll also list the non-classic games I've been playing from now on. Classic games (relevant for the Top 10): Phoenix (Arcade) 8 minutes Ms. Pac-Man (7800) 22 minutes Ghostbusters (2600) 10 minutes Ambulance (TI-99) 13 minutes Ms. Pac-Man (TI-99) 17 minutes Sneggit (TI-99) 13 minutes Burger Time (TI-99) 41 minutes Anteater (Arcade) 90 minutes Non-classic games (irrelevant for the Top 10): Restaurant City (Facebook app): 334 minutes (spread throughout the days... this is one of those games you have to nurture like a Tamagotchi) Kapiland (Browser game): 15 minutes Illegal parking (Facebook app): not exactly logged how much... will try to start logging this game next week.

Here's my best so far... 50930. MsPacMan_03.bmp I got to the pear level, where there's a pear-shaped pear peering around the... uh, well, whatever, never mind. :-)

OK, here's my entry... $ 4500. I refuse to play this again, because I don't know if I could do much better than that. The process of catching ghosts is too unpredictable in my eyes (as soon as you release the trap, it's basically a matter of luck if you'll get the ghost or not).

OK, here's my best so far... 14810. This game is quite different from the arcade original. As was to be expected from Coleco, they took way too many compromises (try the C-64 version for a comparison, which is also 16K long!). But at least, here all objects move at a consistent speed, which they don't do in the arcade original, which sometimes makes it hard to hit the enemies correctly. Oh, and I think they intentionally made the "invaders" in the first stage look completely different from the ones in the arcade, in order to prevent a lawsuit from Taito!

Here is my best so far... 1470. (Yes, I know, laughably low... just tried it once or twice)

Here are my times for this past week: Spare Change (Atari 8-bit): 115 minutes in 4 sessions Gorf (Colecovision) 42 minutes Gorf (Arcade) 15 minutes Yosaku To Donbei (Arcade) 15 minutes Snoopy & the Red Baron (2600): 8 minutes Cosmic Guerilla (Arcade) 7 minutes

Here are my times for this week (15th through 21th of June): Road Blasters (Arcade)... 224 minutes in 2 sessions (actually, I don't know if this qualifies for this thread... it was the Arcade/MAME HSC game, but, like Super Qix, it bears a 1987 copyright date) Universal Chaos (2600)... 33 minutes in 2 sessions (another HSC game) Curse of Blackbeard's skull (2600)... 5 minutes Lunar Leeper (C-64)... 20 minutes Spare Change (C-64)... 80 minutes Spare Change (Atari 8-bit)... 158 minutes in 3 sessions I rediscovered "Lunar Leeper" while I was dusting off my C-64 in order to add some SID tunes to my music collection (I sample them in from the real thing). That was when I came across the disk of "Lunar Leeper". After that, I found "Spare Change", but strangely, the version I have crashes after the 5th or 6th level, so I tried the Atari 8-bit version instead... which seems to be closer to the Apple original (I suppose the Apple II was the original version), and also is much harder than the C-64 one.

Sorry, I just noticed that I forgot to post my times for last week (from June 8th through June 14th). Here they are: Amidar (Arcade)... 29 minutes (HSC game) Panky the Panda (2600)... 2 minutes Strip-Off (2600)... 2 minutes Cosmic Guerilla Mockup by Cybergoth (2600)... 2 minutes Cosmic Guerilla Mockup by vdub_bobby (2600)... 3 minutes Rip Off (Arcade)... 3 minutes Cosmic Guerilla (Arcade)... 6 minutes The last 5 were all inspired by the new homebrew "Strip-Off" which was posted by Neuronic. It looks very much like Cosmic Guerilla, although he actually intended to do a port of "Rip Off", but then started to change around game elements. That's why, after playing his version, I went to compare it to the two other mock-ups of Cosmic Guerilla that have been posted by Cybergoth and vdub_bobby some years ago, as well as the original arcade version and the original version of "Rip off". Other than that, I played more "modern" games which are beyond the scope of this thread... Restaurant City (Facebook), Kapiland, Illegal parking (Facebook) and Level R.

OK, this is my best so far... 24510.

OK, I think this should be enough for today... 84965.

OK, sorry to dig out this old thread here, but there has been another variation on Cosmic Guerilla posted, called Strip off. It's here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=145539 And that reminded me of this thread. Seems like the effort here dried down before the game was finished, though Bobby's version looked quite far along, and I think it could have evolved into a complete game if work on it would have been continued. Actually, I would have had even different ideas for the kernel... also taking into account the enhanced "Cosmic Do!" version. I probably would have tried to reduce flicker in the "normal cases". A "normal case" for me would be a row where nothing is moving at the moment, meaning that all men which are still there are in the middle, and all aliens which are still there are on the left or right. In that case, both aliens could be displayed using one player with 2 copies. And as soon as an alien strays off, the two aliens could be displayed alternatively with a 30 Hz flicker. This would free up one player on each row for other purposes, for instance, for the men or for the extra ship. In this case, I would use the second player to display the men. Since a player is 8 bits wide, three of them could be used to display three men next to each other. And that player could be duplicated so that it displays both sets of men, on the left and on the right, in the same frame. The only downside of this would be that the pattern of that player would have to be re-written in mid-scanline. But that way, if the ball or the playfield gets used for the extra ships, a "normal" row could be displayed without any flicker. OK, it's also displayed without flicker in Cybergoth's version... but anyway, these would be my ideas.

Uh... yes. Don't quite know how to play "Keep away" (but maybe the instructions are on the homepage, didn't look now). "Strip off", however, reminds me a bit of "Cosmic Guerilla", only that it's greatly simplified. It's a bit like what I'd expected if Coleco would have ported "Cosmic Guerilla" to the Atari 2600. There indeed have been many game elements of this stripped off. :-) Actually, there has been a PC spin-off called "Cosmic Do!" which adds even more game elements, and which I like very much. And there once was a thread going on here back in 2005 about porting "Cosmic Guerilla" to the 2600... but the game never was completed. Anyway, it's here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=75559 The mock-ups on this don't look bad, but they are a bit... monochrome. But the original wasn't very colorful either.

OK, here's my best so far... 51900.

OK, in spite of my initial plans, I did sneak in some retrogaming this week again... but I'm now switching to only play the games I want to play, so I didn't take part in all of the HSC's. First on Wednesday, I took part in the Arcade/MAME HSC, after which I decided to play some other arcade games... Joust (Arcade)... 26 minutes Donkey Kong Jr. (Arcade)... 12 minutes Super Qix (Arcade)... 63 minutes Pooyan (Arcade)... 11 minutes Note that I intentionally listed the games in the order I played them this time. Pooyan was the last one. Actually, I like Pooyan, and I played it quite a lot back in 1983 when I used to visit the arcade every week. I'm fairly good at it, so each game lasts at least 5 minutes (in this case it was 11 minutes), and somehow I don't get angry if I lose a game, which is different to other games. Maybe that's because there's no real goal to reach, except for surviving the first two rounds which I do make everytime. Other than that, except for changing bonus rounds, the game just goes on and on and on. And I don't know if Super Qix is eligible for this thread, since it bears a 1987 copyright date and was never officially ported to any home system, although the Amiga got a knock-off called Power Styx, which changes some of the additional game elements. I can remember putting together a hacked version of that Amiga version where I exchanged all the samples (which sounded pretty dull) for more exciting ones I created myself. In the original version, the counting down of the bonus at the end of each round took forever (about one second per percent over the limit), but I managed to fix this by putting a much shorter sample in the place of the original one that got played for each bonus percent counted. I was actually surprised that exchanging the samples worked that flawlessly, but they were on the disk in the standard format that was also used by the sampling program I used. But that was all in the late 80's... I didn't plan to play other retrogames after that, but when I saw that Missile Command is this week's 2600 HSC game, I decided to try that too, so: Missile Command (2600)... 40 minutes

Actually, I was also thinking of this version of Missile Command some days ago... about how this would maybe be a good game to try again. Now there's actually a reason to do that... I have to say this was once one of my favorite games. It was actually one of the "killer apps" of the Atari 2600 for me, and we bought it along with the console back in early 1984, so with the pack-in, Pac Man, we had two games for it initially. Measured by that, my score is not really great... 48885. .

OK, since this round seemingly hasn't ended yet (no end date is given in the start of this thread), here's my best... 66400.